Ice hits Memphis, but it could have been worse

March 3, 2014 - The home of Clay and Liz Harrell on New Brunswick Road is littered with broken limbs from Pine trees that began to fall on and around their house around 9 pm Sunday night.. The Harrells has to cut their way out of their driveway to get to the road. They lost power for about 12 hours but it was restored just in time for them to start dinner.The Mid South now begins to dig out of a winter storm that has left thousands without power. (Chris Desmond/Special to The Commercial Appeal)

March 3, 2014 — 8-year-old Samuel Willie, of New Orleans, LA, makes a snow angel as he plays in the snow with his family at Court Square in Memphis, Tenn. Monday afternoon. The Willies, a family of five, are vacationing in Memphis to escape Mardi Gras festivities and weren’t expecting the snow here. “The kids have never seen snow like this before,” says Jill Willie, Samuel’s mother. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

As brutal as this winter has been, it's strange to hear someone suggest that Greater Memphis dodged another frigid bullet Monday.

A maelstrom of freezing rain, sleet and snow threw more than 50,000 people in the dark, closed schools and offices and turned roads and bridges into skating rinks.

But it could have been much worse, if an Artic blast had arrived sooner, or if torrential rains had lingered a few hours.

"The Memphis metro area has been very lucky," said meteorologist Steve Cromer with the National Weather Service Memphis office. "We had similar events like this earlier this season when the Memphis area lucked out. Our luck will run out some time."

The hinterlands to the north and northeast weren't so lucky, receiving as much as 4 inches of frozen precipitation and layers of road ice that probably won't be gone until mid week.

Public safety officials said hazardous roads would continue to be a threat in coming days. "This is going to be with us for some time," Sheriff Bill Oldham said during a press conference in which he thanked the public for staying off the roads.

Cromer said Tuesday's mid-30s high and sunshine should help burn off thinner ice, but it may cause melting and refreezing on roads with thicker, opaque ice.

Office of Preparedness director Bob Nations said the northern part of the county took a bigger hit, but outages and damage to utility poles were widespread. Fifty significant instances of downed limbs and trees were noted by mid-morning. By Monday afternoon, MLGW crews had restored power to thousands of customers, bringing the number of outages down to 15,092 by late Monday night.

Despite the ice, Memphis city government offices stayed open Monday. "We don't have a closing policy. The presumption is that we stay open," Mayor A C Wharton said.

Yet, the way the storm's uneven stroke, missing some areas, hitting others, set off a wave of comments to The Commercial Appeal and on social media. Some suggested the weather forecasters had overreacted.

The worst damage fell north of a line running southwest to northeast, paralleling Interstate 40. The ice storm warning took in all of Shelby County, but Cromer said that's because such forecasts are done county by county. "It's very difficult to say that the Memphis metro area will not get hit. It's too risky," Cromer said. "It was so close."

Cromer said the Shelby Forest area reported 4 inches of sleet, snow and ice, and parts of Tipton County received more than 3 inches.

Bill Hughes lost power for two hours in Tipton's Brighton community, and ice downed a 15-year-old weeping willow tree in his yard.

"I have a 60-foot weeping willow that's fallen in the back yard and smashed my fence. It missed the house and the honey house. It fell right between them," said Hughes, a beekeeper.

As the storm developed, freezing rain moved in and temperatures hung at 33 degrees for several hours. A thin coat of ice formed before rain moved east, with sleet and snow flurries trailing in its wake. Less than an inch of frozen stuff accumulated in most of Memphis.

Cromer said the airport recorded a record 2.39 inches of rain Sunday, mostly in about six hours. The old record was 1.97 inches on March 2, 1997. Monday's maximum high would have been a record low, if not for a 30-degree reading at midnight, when Monday's 24-hour measurements began, he said. The record low maximum temperature for March 3 is 28 degrees, set in 1943. "Our daytime high (20 degrees at 2 p.m.) would have crushed that," Cromer said.

The storm caused widespread road icing across Arkansas, north Mississippi and West Tennessee. There was a noticeable slowdown of big-rig traffic on Interstates 40 and 55 passing through Downtown Memphis.

Memphis Area Transit Authority canceled express bus service to West Memphis and Presidents Island. Other MATA buses ran a bit late on slippery streets.

Airlines canceled at least 25 flights at Memphis International Airport, because of hazardous weather in other cities, primarily to the north and northeast.